Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

A blog to help me document my journey out of debt.

I'm the CFO of a three-adult, two-child, two-cat household. There's me (CJ, age 44), my husband (NT, age 44), my wife (AS, age 39), and our kids AA (age 7) and SL (age 5). Oh, and the cats are named Whiskey and Clue.

Until July 2007 we hadn't been serious about financial stability, but then we started focusing on paying down our massive debt, building an emergency fund and saving for retirement. In October 2010, we finished paying off all of our credit card debt--over $70,000! Adding in student loans and mortgages, we've paid off more than $250,000 of debt so far. In June 2015, we used a windfall to pay off all our remaining non-home-related debt!

Pragmatic - emergency preparedness. Research on cdc.gov, ready.gov & dps.mn.gov. Make a kit, make a plan, get informed. First aid training, e.g. CPR.
Jan: researched kits, plans and classes; bought some preparedness supplies for kit; cleaned out basement to make room for eventual emergency kit.
Feb: no progress

Work/professional development: Look for class on Agile; see if work will pay for it.
Jan: No progress
Feb: No progress

Work/professional development: Start to limit social/personal internet at work.
Jan: No personal internet/phone at work one day per week. DONE!
Feb: 2 days per week--done

Home: Full kitchen renovation. See what other improvements we can save up for after that.
Jan: Savings at $21,075

Vacations: UK family trip after Xmas. Solo trips for adults. Weekend at lake. CJ family reunion in June/July Niece's wedding in Va. in August.
Jan: some planning, nothing booked
Feb: time off booked for June/July and August trips

Big picture goals:

$512,564 in retirement assets by March 2019
Balance as of 1/31/2018: $404,682
Ultimate goal: 8x annual income by retirement

Lots of expenses

July 27th, 2017 at 09:01 am

One of the reasons I'm dead set on eating through the fridge is so we can hopefully skip grocery shopping for at least a week (and do minimal shopping the following one). Our shared spending is now deeply in the red.

We have plenty of time to make it up before we'd have to pull from savings, so I'm still hoping we can pull it off. I think we will.

Recent expenses that have thrown us out of whack:
- It started in June with a $150 medical bill and an outdoor spigot that needed fixing, $625
- Then came AS's additional trip after the planned one--between her necessary spending and my and NT's extra spending due to routine being thrown off, maybe $2000?
- The two parties, about $425 for food and beverages
- Our anniversary dinner, an absolutely incredible experience that came to $415 plus Lyft rides to and from
- Spending for the August trip to Va.--I was thinking about trying to bunk with family and borrow a car from them, but decided it was worth the expense to save the hassle and get a hotel and rental car. About $1500--and we'll have food, entertainment and gas expenses while we're there.

All things considered, the fact that we're "only" $3200 in the hole isn't too bad. Without the unexpected medical, repair and travel costs we'd be almost breaking even. And I've been still putting a third of AS's net income into savings for renovations.

AS has been booking work steadily since she came back from her travels. She's traveling again for 10 days starting Monday, but it's a work thing where she expects a lot of downtime, so she's been booking jobs that she can work while she's there. She's just agreed to another job that may be small or big--we're waiting to hear how much time it is and what it pays (but it's with a place that's always generous, so she agreed to it either way).

So without that, which could be anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand, and another place that's probably going to give her $1000 job soon, she's already got nearly $5K of work booked. With these other two factored in it could be closer to $7500. I always take off 36% for taxes and retirement, which would leave us with about $4800. If I put a third of that into savings, that leaves $3200--exactly what we need to make up the deficit!

We don't have a ton of other expenses coming up that aren't budgeted for.
- School supplies and clothes will be a couple hundred, probably, now that both kids are going.
- Vacation spending in Va. will add up but I don't think it'll be outrageous.
- State Fair has already been budgeted for, thank goodness--we like to go a couple times and sample a ton of food.
- And NT's spending while in the UK will come out of UK savings (which is our EF, but he won't use it all and we'll replenish easily enough with rental income).

If we can avoid too much grocery spending for the next couple weeks, we can apply that budget to the deficit. Plus I have a small ($500 or so) budget surplus in September that can help offset it too. And of course AS will continue to book more work.

So, it'll be a bit of a slog, but I feel good about being able to eventually make it up without withdrawing from or slowing contributions to our savings!